Christian PondellaPhotoFrom a distance it looked perfect. Perfectly epic. But from the summit, with skis on, looking down at an enormous chockstone wedged into the trap door of a fifty-five degree couloir, nine thousand vertical feet above the trucks, a sliver’s width passage to either side and only the thinnest of early-spring rot to look forward to, the prospect suddenly became, as Pondella would later recall, “frickin’ dicey.”